Travel

Sometimes things change, lives change, people change. People are left behind not by choice but perhaps by chance. In my case, my mentor, friend, beer buddy, and fellow archeologist RWR was in my life. For whatever reason, I never reached back out to him, never called, wrote a letter. It was too easy to find his phone number and address. Why? Why do we punish ourselves thus? My wife had told me any number of times since about 1995 to call him, to reach out. Now RWR is 67 years old and tonite after reaching a zenith of indecision, I called him. We talked for almost an hour about the things that happened. I told RWR we loved him and missed him and that I would be coming out later in the year to see him. I’m putting a AMTRAK train trip together now to go to Los Angeles and then I’ll drive myself and my 11 year old daughter up to see RWR. She has heard the stories, listened to the private laughs my wife and I still share. She is curious. What could this be like?

The lesson I learned tonight is never do this to yourselves. Its never too late to reach out and I am so glad I listened to an old friend Nan about it. She told me to do it. Women have this sense that we men seem to not. They know what they should do in these kinds of situations and we men misery our way through it.

All I can say now is that I am relieved, happy, and will soon see my dear old friend RWR again. To hold a beer, a piece of pizza, an engaging discussion about prehistory, physical anthropology, life. Remember those old surveys, juke boxes he kicked, hotels we stayed in, and all that beer we drank. Its all good.

Wrap all this up in the Coast Starlight AMTRAK and you have a trip that will engage me, make my 11 year old enjoy, and then the real and true reward is the visit with Rog at the very end. We’ll get on board on the 24th of March and head down to Los Angeles. Have a nice room that night and get a rental car. Drive up to Lancaster and stay a few nights.

Last day in the office here in Chennai. Spent the day in meetings with the team here and trying to get some time limited work done. This trip has been more about scheduling and finishing some significant work endeavors. I did have a chance to go to the Krishna Restaurant at New Woodlands. If you read this poor excuse of a blog you will remember, I stayed at the New Woodlands for some months before. The food there is excellent and the cuisine is vegetarian. My favoriates are the vegetable curry dishes and any of the rice dishes. Their butter Nan is very good too. I wanted to get to the Copper Chimney Restaurant and Zara but could not. The jet lag thing seems to always get me.

Anyways, getting ready to get ready here. I leave for the hotel at 6pm and then will do the dinner thing, sit around and watch TV in the room for awhile and leave around 10pm. My flight boards at 00:45am Saturday morning and then leaves at 01:15am. I land in Changi at 8am or so and then get my room at the transit hotel until about 4pm when I board SQ 2 for my fllight back home. Turn the clock 14 hours or so and I magically appear around 5pm in the evening on Saturday at SFO.

Travel mode is reset pending a few more hours at the work place here in Chennai.

Tonite is my last night this trip in Chennai. I fly out on a “red eye” at 0115 or so Saturday morning and land in Singapore at 8am. Then I have to wait 10 hours due to a slight screw-up on my part with the flights. So I am checking in to the transit hotel at Changi so I have a place to crash out for some bit of time. Then I get on the evening Singapore Airlines flight and take back off again for my 15 hour or so whirlwind tour at 30k feet. Looks like I will be back in April/May for a longer time but not sure yet.

It will be good to get home this time. I’ve had this congestion and cough for some days. Same thing everyone had at home when I was there. Not fun to travel with it so I am medicating now and have been.

I will whistle back to the states here in a few nights. Thanks to Chennai as usual for your open arms and great restaurants. Had my share of great South Indian vegetarian and some good chicken, mutton, and other stuff.

All good!

I woke kinda early this morning because of that insatiable monster jet lag which seems intent on waking me at various early times in the morning. I got back to sleep until 6am thankfully but wanted to blog a few thoughts about the whole frequent travel and hotel thing.The basic point is:

Hotel Internet always sucks. If its wired, its in a place where you have to sit at an uncomfortable table and they go by MAC address so you are limited to how many systems can be up at a time.
Its its wireless, you can move around but there is still a limitation.

Thankfully my friend Art to the rescue my last trip to Singapore. He suggested one device to replicate wired connections and I settled for another that does the same thing. My solution is a D-Link one here. You basically plug it in using AP Mode and it basically takes the hotel internet and lets you authenticate with the hotel portal but it uses the MAC address of the Dlink and not specific systems. After plugging it and authenticating, I can bring up my netbook running Windows 7 and do work on it that I need while still having my primary Ubuntu-powered laptop running. I can even let my android phone share the IP happiness.

On wireless, I can use internet connection sharing. In this mode, I plug in a second USB wireless card but I cannot seem to get this to a reliable state sometimes. Instead if I share the connection using the wired ethernet port and this howto for doing the work using IPtables its easier. As I’ve blogged earlier, the network mangler one never worked for me at all and not for others that commented either. The IPtables one just works for both wired and wifi. Its not the same type of solution as the first, but I can get two systems up at the same time. Anyone know an easy way with Linux to share a hotel wifi connection reliably?

Anyways, I’m sure you can do all this on other devices; but the Dlink is so small and configurable and works so easily and has no antennas to bend or break. Works for me. Also pack a USB hub, a 4 port travel power strip, and some ethernet cables like a crossover and regular and you have a decent mobile warrior setup.

The last few days were a travel blur for me. I left San Francsico on Singapore Airlines Flight 01 which departed at 00:05am on Wednesday. I landed in Hong Kong at around 8am on Thursday morning. Left for Singapore on the continuing saga that is SQ 01 and landed around 11:45am. Had one day in Singapore and one night. I ended doing lunch and dinner with some colleagues in the Singapore office and drank a few beers that evening. Slept for almost 11.5 hours and was rather non-responsive at 7am when I had to get up, eat breakfast, and head back to the airport.

Then it was Jet Airways 9W15 departing at 9:20am and landing at 11am in Chennai. Got to the Raintree Hotel and unpacked a bit and went to the office for about 5 hours here in Chennai. Ate dinner in the coffee shop at the Raintree. Slept again for almost 10 hours. Now its Saturday and I have some work to do that has been waiting patiently for me. I’ll be in the Chennai office for the next 5 work days and then fly back out again at 00:15am Saturday morning to Singapore. Land at 8:15am and have a 10 hour layover which I will spend at the transit hotel at Changi Airport Terminal 3. Then off I go again back home at 5:50pm and get in before i left.

So, in essence, that’s the trip for me. But here in Chennai I have some days to get back to some places in Mylapore I want to go like the New Woodlands Hotel for breakfast and tomorrow I’ll go to the Chennai Citi Centre for awhile and shop around at the Landmark store, look for some stuff for my daughter, and generally rest up. Today is a rest plus work day for me as well.

I’m happy to be back in my second “native place” and the Raintree treats me only too well. The folks here all know me so breakfast always is over-indulging in things like Masala Dosa’s. Tonite, I will eat “above sea level” on the roof at the Raintree! Woot! Its a beautiful day so evening dining under starlight should be cool. The list of places I want to go here:

• BBQ Nation – search for it on my weblog. What a great place to eat.
• Chola Sheraton and the Peshawri Restaurant – drink at the bar, eat at the restaurant. The bar is very nice there.
• New Woodlands Hotel Krishna Restaurant – some of the best South Indian cuisine. Breakfast with the surly but sometimes friendly staff. Land of the overwhelming Masala Dosa, filtered coffee which strikes your senses with a hot stick, and some other great choices.
• Copper Chimney Restaurant in Mylapore – Oh yeah! Their Mutton Chello Kebab rules.
• Zara Tapas in Mylapore – right next to the “chimney” cold Kingfishers, tapas style food.

There you got it! My recipe to a week of over indulgence bounded by the hotel staff at the Raintree. Yay!

This Tuesday evening I pull the plug on California and leave for Singapore and Chennai, India for 2 weeks or so. I’ll be leaving on the wondrous Singapore Airlines at midnight on Tuesday and get in at noon on Thursday. Then Friday, off I go to India. My first weekend will be a blur of touring around Chennai to a few places and also getting over jetlag. Perhaps a time or two on the rooftop drinking Kingfisher. Maybe the Cel India support guys will want to meet at Chola Sheraton…

Anyways, will be good to see everyone at those ports of call.

This was a good weekend for me thanks to a great hotel find in Chico at the Residence Inn and a few dinners. First night here went to the legendary Sierra Nevada Brewery and then last night to Mountain Mikes Pizza in Paradise, California. Best of all got to spend time with my old friend Ed and gave him a Nexus One phone fresh from google and ready for rooting and use. We ended up after the dinner at Sierra Nevada Brewery in the hotel room with a sixer of Torpedo Extra IPA from Sierra Nevada Brewery, some chips, dip, and a few funny movies  with Jim Carry on the tube.

The Amtrak ride was all I remember it to be. The Capitol Corridor ride has some wondrous scenery along the bay and coast and then into the central valley. The train has a nice feel and is very comfortable to ride in along with 110v power connectors all over the place. There is no wifi throughout the train yet but sometimes you just don’t need that. Especially with a Nexus One Android Phone, unlimited T-Mobile data, and wireless tethering.

Today its back home. Back to kids, wife. In about a week, I leave for 10 days to Singapore and Chennai, India. All that travel is planned and programmed. I’m ready to go.

Heading back home today. First stop Narita after some 7 hours of flying from Singapore. Then get on an evening JAL flight and arrive before I left. Gimme that time back . I’ll be back in Singapore and India mid-February for a few weeks. Got travel planned out pretty much rest of this year  back. One of the trips, I’ll do a rather neat side-trip I have wanted to do for awhile to China and another one my 12 year old daughter goes to India with me. I have this list of places in China to go mostly around history and prehistory. I will take my daughter someplace interesting as well perhaps a train journey.

This next trip back to India is a quick one and mostly around office management stuff. It will be good to see all the Cel India folks and harass them for awhile.

Catch everyone on the flipside.

Here I am in Singapore now. Got in after a 40 minute flight from Koala Lumpur. As usual, customs coming in takes about 5 minutes. Yay!! Finally got to my hotel around 1230am and fell into a coma for 7 hours. Thanks to Celestix Singapore for taking care of me. I appreciate the little extras for this stay. I’m here for 5 days and fly back stateside on Wednesday morning. First off to Narita and then to San Francisco on JAL.

I’m really glad to be here because I like Singapore a lot. It just feels comfortable, easy to get around and do things, and I have an old friend coming into town this Monday from the Linuxcare days and before. We get to share a dinner and a drink or two, talk about the days and friends, and look at what 2010 will offer. Normally, I go off to the Southern California Linux Expo but this year I will miss it for the first time ever. I leave for Chennai, India on 16 February; barely a month after I get back from Singapore. I miss and really love Chennai and its people, culture, traditions, food, beer; so I will enjoy being there for a week or so in mid February. I also get a quick stopover here in Singapore on that trip since I cannot muster the endurance to make the 21 hour flight all at one time. This time I fly on Singapore Airlines to Singapore and then Jet Airways to Chennai.

This weekend is rather free even though I have work I need to get done which was delayed last week due to our sales conference. As much as I liked the conference, I think if I am invited to a similar event in the future, I’ll just decline. I’m not good in large numbers of people and never have been. I don’t like community lunches or socializing with folks in bars. I can do a person or two; but not 30.  Its a built in limitation I have.

Tomorrow, two developers I manage come in from India to work in Singapore for 2 days. We need to get a bunch of stuff done and this is a great opportunity for the “pollination” of offices I think we should foster.

So, there ya go. My life and welcome to it. Its a slow Saturday in Singapore. I’m still a bit tired and will probably really not do that much today. Restaurants around the hotel are easy to get to and there is some decent shopping over in Tampines if the mood includes.